HR firm Kenexa concluded a big gap exists between what human resources professionals think they know about their workforce and what employees actually believe. Issues include employee engagement, loyalty and retention.

A global strategic-consulting firm, The Hackett Group, said HR departments aren’t providing their companies enough support for employees, talent recruitment, learning and development, and succession planning.

All of this results in a talent crisis and alarming conclusions to say the least.

However, HR professionals are never 100 percent at fault. Nearly every company complains about recruiting and the lack of skills among workers.

Senior bosses can share in the blame, too.

Many bosses need to do a better job of sharing their visions to increase profits as well as their expectations for HR professionals.

Either way – to silence critics and to garner praise for helping their companies to profits –it’s in the best interest of HR professionals to use the right strategies and metrics.

Where to start

Start with a question: What do HR pros need to do in order to alleviate your concerns as a chief executive and to win your praise?

Answer: They need to understand your big-picture perspective, and be ready with information and solutions.

HR can achieve this by starting to implement the right approaches in strategies and metrics.

Strategies

There are three salient strategies to remember:

Ask the right questions of department heads, for example:

– “What helps you to operate efficiently?”

– “What helps you to satisfy our customers?”

– “What data does the boss want most often?”

Among your departments, you’ll see common threads in the most critical data.

Develop the most-relevant information. That means analyzing the numbers to discover their meaning. What are the causes of positive and adverse developments? Find out.

Power Your Brand with Employee Empowerment — Are you investing in marketing, but not getting the anticipated return on your investment? If you’re disappointed by your ROI, remember marketing may or may not be the problem.

Remove Guesswork for Promoting Talent — Baseball is a great metaphor for winning in business by promoting the right employees To win baseball championships, there’s often a correlation — among a baseball team’s management, talent and farm system. A farm system’s role is to provide training and experience for young players.

4 Mindsets for Leadership in Performance Reviews — Are you nervous at the thought of giving employee-performance reviews? You’re not alone. Your employees aren’t exactly thrilled, either. Typically, employees aren’t convinced they can get valid feedback. If they’ve experienced poor managers, they likely dread the performance-review process or are skeptical of the outcome.

“There is always a better way.“

-Thomas Edison

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Author Terry Corbell has written innumerable online business-enhancement articles, and is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services. For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule him as a speaker, consultant or author, please contact Terry.